试图确定生物多样性是否能够帮助生态系统缓冲极端气候事件之影响的试验产生了形成强烈对比的结果。Forest Isbell等人将来自46个实验(这些实验对欧洲和北美各地的草地植物多样性进行操控，并对生产力进行测定)的数据相结合，发现生物多样性的确会提高一个生态系统对极端气候事件的抵抗力。只有少量物种的地块在极端气候事件期间生产力下降了50%，而这种影响随着物种数量的增加会被减半。然而，生物多样性对生态系统快速恢复能力没有明显影响，低生物多样性群落和高生物多样性群落在一年内都能够从极端气候事件中恢复过来。(来源：生物360)

Biodiversity increases the resistance of ecosystem productivity to climate extremes

Abstract  It remains unclear whether biodiversity buffers ecosystems against climate extremes, which are becoming increasingly frequent worldwide. Early results suggested that the ecosystem productivity of diverse grassland plant communities was more resistant, changing less during drought, and more resilient, recovering more quickly after drought, than that of depauperate communities. However, subsequent experimental tests produced mixed results. Here we use data from 46 experiments that manipulated grassland plant diversity to test whether biodiversity provides resistance during and resilience after climate events. We show that biodiversity increased ecosystem resistance for a broad range of climate events, including wet or dry, moderate or extreme, and brief or prolonged events. Across all studies and climate events, the productivity of low-diversity communities with one or two species changed by approximately 50% during climate events, whereas that of high-diversity communities with 16–32 species was more resistant, changing by only approximately 25%. By a year after each climate event, ecosystem productivity had often fully recovered, or overshot, normal levels of productivity in both high- and low-diversity communities, leading to no detectable dependence of ecosystem resilience on biodiversity. Our results suggest that biodiversity mainly stabilizes ecosystem productivity, and productivity-dependent ecosystem services, by increasing resistance to climate events. Anthropogenic environmental changes that drive biodiversity loss thus seem likely to decrease ecosystem stability, and restoration of biodiversity to increase it, mainly by changing the resistance of ecosystem productivity to climate events.

原文链接：http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v526/n7574/pdf/nature15374.pdf